PUBG & 118 More Chinese Apps To Be Banned In India

On Wednesday, 02 September, the Ministry of Electronics and IT issued orders to ban 118 more Chinese apps, including PUBG, and apps from the stable of Baidu WeChat, and Tencent. NDTV posits that the move could be read in the light of fresh tensions over China’s provocation in Ladakh. The apps were banned by invoking Section 69 of the Information Technology Act “in the interest of India’s sovereignty and integrity, defence and security, the government said in a statement,” Live Mint tells us. There are close to 33 million active PUBG players in India.

Prior to this, on 29 June, amid rising tensions along the India-China border, the Government of India had decided to ban about 59 Chinese mobile apps citing privacy issues. TikTok, which had the maximum number of users in India, followed by China and the US, was also banned in India. TikTok is a Chinese short-video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based company founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming.

India Today reported, “According to the report by Sensor Tower, TikTok crossed the 2 billion mark soon after surpassing the 1.5 billion mark in the first quarter of 2020. Out of the 2 billion, India turned out to be the biggest driver with over 611 million downloads. The report revealed that TikTok’s surge in popularity was due to the coronavirus pandemic. People found TikTok to be most entertaining and engaging in quarantine.”

A Business Today report posited that TikTok was caught spying upon users who were using iOS 14 by accessing the clipboard on their devices. Amid the India-China face-off and the call to boycott Chinese goods getting louder, TikTok’s ratings had slipped.

Meanwhile, Digit reported that a homegrown social networking app called ‘Chingari’, which had been launched as a TikTok alternative by two Bengaluru-based software engineers Biswatma Nayak and Siddharth Gautam went viral with more than 2.5 million downloads on the Google Playstore.

According to Times Now, “The order issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) stated that the 59 apps that have been banned by the Government of India ‘are prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the state and public order’.”

India Today’s report named the following on the list of apps due to being banned by the Centre:

TikTok
Shareit
Kwai
UC Browser
Baidu map
Shein
Clash of Kings
DU battery saver
Helo
Likee
YouCam makeup
Mi Community
CM Browers
Virus Cleaner
APUS Browser
ROMWE
Club Factory
Newsdog
Beutry Plus
WeChat
UC News
QQ Mail
Weibo
Xender
QQ Music
QQ Newsfeed
Bigo Live
SelfieCity
Mail Master
Parallel Space
Mi Video Call Xiaomi
WeSync
ES File Explorer
Viva Video QU Video Inc
Meitu
Vigo Video
New Video Status
DU Recorder
Vault- Hide
Cache Cleaner DU App studio
DU Cleaner
DU Browser
Hago Play With New Friends
Cam Scanner
Clean Master Cheetah Mobile
Wonder Camera
Photo Wonder
QQ Player
We Meet
Sweet Selfie
Baidu Translate
Vmate
QQ International
QQ Security Center
QQ Launcher
U Video
V fly Status Video
Mobile Legends
DU Privacy

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